Wasn't someone trying to work on a C backend for DMD?

[Chad J]

On 04/28/2012 11:36 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Chad J"<chadjoan at __spam.is.bad__gmail.com>  wrote in message
> news:jnhv5n$qe3$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> I've googled for it a bit and searched over newsgroup messages but I can't
>> find the post that mentioned this.  I think it might have been amidst the
>> discussion of the javascript backend.
>>
>> I want to download it and try it out.
>
> MicroD: https://github.com/yebblies/dmd/tree/microd
>
> D->JS thread mentioning it in a few places:
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/yfmgvgprfpiquakiyjlk@forum.dlang.org?page=1
>
>

Hey, thanks!

Bummer, no commits in the last 3 months or so.

At any rate, I almost wonder if I can compile the output C code on the 
OpenVMS system at work.  I have a project in C I work on from time to 
time, but it's an uncomfortable (to say the least) environment to work 
with.  There is stuff like this:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Languages-and-Scripting/How-do-I-get-C-program-tracebacks-to-print-SOURCE-line-numbers/td-p/5570015
If I had DMD with C-backend at my disposal, then maybe I could 
instrument it with a calling convention that gives me exception handling 
and proper debug information.  Then I'd also get arrays and various 
other really nice D features, even with just the basics.  I wouldn't 
bother getting the GC to work, but it'd make me consider implementing 
some kind of reference counting.  Even without ref counting I'd have way 
more at that point than what I have currently with straight C code.

And if I /could/ get reference counting, and if the backend were solid 
enough, then the thing could probably be used for writing games.  I'd 
have the ability to output extremely portable C code to pretty much any 
target except the web, and there's the JS backend for that.  Very enticing!

I wonder what it would take to get this sort of thing merged into mainline.